


like blood from a stone

by s0ftpillow



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, M/M, Vignette, miserable old men with no communication skills
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-22
Updated: 2018-02-22
Packaged: 2019-03-22 09:59:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13761714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/s0ftpillow/pseuds/s0ftpillow
Summary: Neither of them are good at making the whole revenge thing stick when it comes to each other.Or, when you keep running into your ex but can't quite manage to kill him.





	like blood from a stone

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote this a while ago to satisfy my aimless r76 angst itch, found it again in my files, was like 'huh, i like this alright' and figured I might as well share it, like a year later. Also I think it's the one and only fanfic I've ever written, take that as you will. Unbeta'd so sorry for any mistakes i might have missed!

76 sees him.

He catches glimpses through black mist, the gleam of bone and leather in the light of his pulse fire. Empty black sockets seem to fix on him from across the battlefield and he meets them. Freezes. Crossfire lances between them but for a moment they’re both suspended in time. Then the shadow laughs, and it shouldn’t carry in this chaos but it does--a mocking, ugly sound that rings in his ears like a distorted echo. Like someone took his memories of Reyes and twisted them into nightmares.

The thing dissipates, roiling into waves of black and into the alleyways. 76 shoots too late, a streak of blue buries itself in the wall where he had stood a moment before. He keeps moving like he always has—there’s still a job to do that doesn’t involve ghosts coming back to haunt him. He doesn’t want to think about it.

Later, it itches in the back of his mind like a scabbed wound. He can’t stop the awful certainty that wells up when he’s picked the moment apart.

He’s not sure how he knows it’s Gabriel—the thing is all wrong, inhuman, moves like the villain in a cut-rate horror movie. But there’s the shadow of the man in the way he fights. He used to trust in the way he moved, he had relied on it. He knew it as well as the back of his hand. Dying couldn’t make him forget that.

The revelation comes, at first, with a tired acceptance more than anything else. They were always two sides of the same coin, so it makes sense that neither of them would have the good grace to stay dead. 

****

The first time he’s close enough to touch him, he doesn’t see him until the barrel of the shotgun is pressed against the top of his spine. His reflexes are the only thing that save him from a severed spinal cord. As it is, the pellets bury themselves deep in his shoulder in points of agony that he catalogues away as soon as they hit. Nothing vital, not for him, push the pain down deep. He pivots as he falls, ready for a second shot that arcs over his shoulder and pockmarks the ground under him.

“Jack,” a voice growls and he can hear it clearly now, under the layers of distortion. It’s no longer a question. Gabriel. “Still can’t watch your back for shit.”

76 is bleeding onto the dirt, gun pointed up at the dark figure looming above him. It’s the first time he’s heard his name in years and the sound of it makes him sick. His brows furrow and there’s a thin sheen of pain sweat across his forehead, the only things his visor betrays. The black barrels of two shotguns stare him down, but he’s not afraid. There’s a cold, bitter feeling tangling in his chest, scraping along all the broken glass memories he’d done so well to bury. “Didn’t you get the memo,” he rasps. “Jack Morrison is dead.” His fingers itch on the trigger of the pulse rifle. Can he pull the trigger before Reaper? Would it even kill him? He doesn’t think so. He’s seen enough of his work to know he’s not a man anymore, at least not one easily killed by steel and lead.

The thing cocks its head and another laugh rumbles out of its chest. “And yet,” Reaper says. There’s the solid death knell click of the hammer being pulled back. “You have no idea how long I’ve been looking for you. Jack fucking Morrison,” he laughs again. His aim is unwavering and the black pits of his eyes give away nothing. “Look at you… Overwatch’s golden boy all washed up and dried out. Almost makes up for all the shit you did.”

“The shit I— What, you want an apology?” Jack snaps, voice thick with a sudden loathing that stops up his throat. “You made your bed.” How dare he, how _dare he_. He’d mourned despite everything when he’d found him dead and still under the rubble, ruined his hands pulling away the twisted remains of a wall like he could still fix this. Like he could still piece everything back together with the debris of his past and future settling on his shoulders in a fine powder. He remembered how the heat of the explosion had scorched his lungs, how his face had been wet with blood. How he had seen the Talon agents picking over the remains of everything he’d built. And Gabriel slack among the ruins with half his face burned off, all the anger gone out of him along with the life. None of it had made sense.

Gabriel is standing above him and it still doesn’t make sense. He can feel the shotgun pellets embedded in his skin in white points of pain. The lines of Reaper’s shoulders have gone tense with fury.

“I want to finish what I started,” he hisses, and pulls the trigger.

*****

 Gabriel didn’t kill him.

There are nights 76 turns the fact around in his mind, worries at it, picks it apart until he’s too mercifully drunk to think anymore. Sometimes he manages to put it out of his mind entirely, but that never lasts long. He had closed his eyes to death, flinched, and when the overwhelming ringing in his ears stopped he was alone. There was a crater in the ground next to his head and Reaper had fled.

He doesn’t know what to make of it. When he thinks of Reaper there’s a deep, festering rage that burrows into his chest, chokes him, wrings unwanted tears from his eyes that only confuse him more. The feeling of betrayal has never really left him, and he’s never managed to deal with it. He’s a veritable gordian knot of shitty, awful feelings that he will never, ever be able to pick apart. He had loved him, then he had hated him, then Gabriel had died. There’s no closure to that, especially when the person comes back from the dead with a shiny new career in terrorism.

But judging from his new plethora of scars and the fact that 76’s skull is still intact, Reaper also has….mixed feelings. When he decides he has to find him again, he knows it’s unhealthy. He knows it’s self destructive, he knows he doesn’t have a clue what the hell he would say or do to this terrible ghost from his past, this man he would have died for in another life. He searches for him anyway.

*****

He thinks he might not have even needed to look for him.

After the first time he saw him again, alive and monstrous, it was as if the universe had decided to keep throwing them together for it’s sick entertainment. Two feral dogs to toss into the pit together so they can rip each other apart, all terrible bloodsport and mangled feelings. Or maybe, Reaper was still looking for him too.

It doesn’t matter. None of it matters.

76-- no, Jack, can’t kill him. The part of him that should be dead, had been dead, won’t let him.

Their positions are reversed. This time he has the white hot barrel of his rifle searing a circle against the leather of Reaper’s chest, standing over him with his legs bracketing his chest. The silvery claws of Reaper’s gauntlet are wrapped around his ankle, the grip tight but still. There’s no ominous laughter, or dark quips tonight. 76 thinks he must be letting this happen, knows he could go to black smoke at any moment. It’s a test, for both of them.

“What happened to you, Gabriel?” 76 asks finally. His fingers are bone white under his gloves and there’s a frantic energy buzzing under his skin. Reaper is quiet for a moment. His chest does not move with breath, like he really is dead.

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answer to,” the thing that was Gabriel rasps under him.

The anger surges up in him in a heady, disorienting rush. “How’s this then,” he grinds out, “What the _fuck_ are you doing? Why are you with Talon? _Why_ are you with _Talon_?” He’s yelling now, electric with rage and a hurt that comes through despite his best efforts. He thinks maybe he could kill him now, depending on his answer. If it will fix the terrible wound in his heart.

Reaper stares up at him with those empty sockets, saying nothing.

“Were you always this?” Jack shouts at him. He wants to tear him apart for his silence. He jabs the rifle into his chest. “Was Gabriel Reyes a lie? Tell me, did I follow a fucking psychopath for half my life? You were just waiting to destroy everything we built--”

There’s a sharp tug on his ankle and suddenly the world is upending. He finds his gun knocked from his hands the split second before his back slams into the ground. The air is punched out of his lungs with the impact, and there’s a powerful weight on him. Reaper’s hands fist into his jacket collar and pull him up.

“You don’t know anything,” Reaper roars at him, that terrible mask filling his vision. This close 76 can feel the cold radiating from his body, like he really is a corpse. He slams him down into the ground again and 76’s head cracks against the concrete. Sharp pain explodes at the back of his skull. He gasps, his vision swims. Reaper snarls, shaking him. “ _You. Don’t. Know. Anything._ ” He hauls him up and slams him back with each punctuation, until the soldier is slack and groaning under him.

His head lolls on his neck like a string cut puppet, clutching at Reaper’s arms as if to push him off. He just ends up clinging to him as Reaper stills above him. For a moment there’s quiet, only the harsh sound of his breathing and the quiet hum of his pulse rifle, just out of reach. The back of his head feels wet and his knows that if he could touch it his fingers would come away red. There’s a rustling, a tug at his belt and 76 feels a sharp spike of confused dread. But then the soft yellow light of his biotic field washes over him, tingling through his limbs and the back of his skull.

The weight lifts from him in a shift of cold black leather and sharp silver points. “Don’t look for me again,” Reaper says.

He leaves him, the thud of his heavy boots echoing and fading in his ears.

Jack lies there long after the biotic field flickers off, still feeling the phantom chill of Gabriel against his palms.


End file.
